Tips For Painting Headlights?

[morrisey0]

Anyone have any great advice for painting headlights from the inside of lexan? I have seen a few tips here and there, but I am not in love with the results I am seeing. Just wondering if anyone has a tried and true method.

[Incredible_Serious]

Not really my go-to method, but just something that I have tried and found it works okay - at least, for what I was doing.

This is what I did for a couple of Minis a little while ago:

The headlight was left clear. I lightly scored some lines in some clear tape, to match the pattern of old-school headlights. Into this scoring was placed lead pencil dust, which was rubbed to remove most of it, leaving only a slight build-up in the scored lines. This clear tape was then cut to size, and then stuck to the inside of the shell.

I then made my own light buckets using old disposable contact containers, which are light, hemispherical plastic. They come with a foil-backed removable seal ,which was just pushed into the container backwards, with the shiny side showing out. These are then drilled to fit LEDs (if needed), and can then be stuck inside the bodyshell.

I was pleased with how the light details came out, and will try this method further in the future. I'll admit, this is a fairly limited usage application (especially the light buckets), due to the shape of the lights on the body. However, you can buy lexan light bucket 'blanks', which could be chromed and used if needed.

For other examples, I suggest maybe trawling through TamiyaClub showrooms, as some guys over there seem to have very realistic skills (far more than me)...

Alex

[morrisey0]

Thanks Alex! I have made buckets a couple of times before, and I found them so-so. Yours came out better than mine!

For now, I have given up on what looks good directly on the back of the lexan. I have seen some pretty good airbrushing techniques, but they tend to come out a little overdone to me, and not realistic. For now, I have just gone with decals, and I don't love them, but they will do I think. I would still like to learn how to paint them for the future though, if anyone can help.

Forgive everything else in this pic. The grille is being redone, and I made the driving lights / signals way too tall somehow.

[Coelacanth]

Another option that's a bit off-topic as it's not about painting:

Make some stickers instead of painting the lights. I did that with some of my cars, including my Buick GN 1/12 car and a cool Ford Escort RS1800 body for a car I built for my daughter. I just found good, hi-res photos on the internet and resized them to fit the bodies, the printed them with my inkjet printer onto good quality vinyl sticker sheets. It doesn't get much more realistic than actual real photos, printed as stickers.

[Incredible_Serious]

Make some stickers instead of painting the lights. I did that with some of my cars, including my Buick GN 1/12 car and a cool Ford Escort RS1800 body for a car I built for my daughter. I just found good, hi-res photos on the internet and resized them to fit the bodies, the printed them with my inkjet printer onto good quality vinyl sticker sheets. It doesn't get much more realistic than actual real photos, printed as stickers.

Great idea; I need to try that for both a Mk1 and Mk2 Escort body... might have to go searching for usable photos. I have a couple of other bodies that need headlights too (a Toyota Yaris and a McLaren F1 GTR), but I'm not sure a photo will cut it with these three-dimensional headlights .

[Coelacanth]

Make some stickers instead of painting the lights. I did that with some of my cars, including my Buick GN 1/12 car and a cool Ford Escort RS1800 body for a car I built for my daughter. I just found good, hi-res photos on the internet and resized them to fit the bodies, the printed them with my inkjet printer onto good quality vinyl sticker sheets. It doesn't get much more realistic than actual real photos, printed as stickers.

but I'm not sure a photo will cut it with these three-dimensional headlights .

Yeah, you're right about that. My idea only works best for mostly flat-looking lights.

[Basher67]

This is a couple examples on how I paint the headlights on my trucks.